This was a spontaneous civilian movement which sprang into existence as soon as war was declared and assisted the home army in a variety of duties, including the digging of the London defences and the guarding of vulnerable points.

The army lacked sufficient manpower to cope with a major conflict overseas; the government was forced to reinforce it in South Africa by denuding the regular home defences and relying on auxiliaries to volunteer for foreign service.

[5] There were doubts in both government and the military authorities about the auxiliaries' ability to meet such a challenge; the volunteers' performance in the war was questionable due to their poor standards of organisation, equipment and training.

[12][13] Efforts to reform both the regular army and the auxiliaries stalled in the face of political opposition until, in December 1905, a Liberal government took office, bringing in Richard Haldane as the Secretary of State for War.

It was organised into 14 infantry divisions and 14 mounted brigades, structured along regular army lines with integral supporting arms of artillery, engineers and signals, along with supply, medical and veterinary services.

[21] A second CID study in 1908 reiterated the belief that an invasion would be defeated before it made landfall, rendering a large home army unnecessary in the eyes of the military authorities.

Their intelligence gathering activities would be augmented in some maritime counties by the Corps of Guides, formed in 1912 and comprising men over military age with local knowledge, such as hunters and farmers.

By 2 August, strategic locations such as Harwich, the Tyne estuary, Thanet and Ipswich wireless stations, the cable landing point at Dumpton Gap, Grimsby docks, Kinghorn Fort and the Tay defences were manned.

[64][65] Fear of invasion persisted throughout the first months of the war, and Kitchener's decision was motivated in part by his concern that the Territorial Force should not be diverted from what he regarded as its primary task of defending the homeland.

[58] German success on the continent in September and October opened up the prospect of the French channel ports being used to launch an invasion that could outflank the main British coastal defences north of the Thames.

Invasion fears peaked on 20 November, when tides and moon were considered most suitable for an attempt, and resulted in the deployment of 300,000 New Army and territorial troops along the east and south coasts.

[66][67] Within a week of the war's start, Kitchener signalled his willingness to deploy overseas those territorial units which accepted the Imperial Service Obligation en bloc.

One of the few that did was Buckinghamshire Association; on 6 August, it anticipated official policy and organised its reservists into Protection Companies which could be deployed to relieve territorials guarding bridges, waterworks and other essential sites.

[95] By September, National Reservists were deployed on protection duties at Dover harbour, the Manchester Ship Canal and points at Stowmarket and Lowestoft near or on the east coast in Suffolk, all on the initiative of local authorities.

In October, the War Office instructed Buckinghamshire to provide a 120-strong railway protection company, while 2,000 reservists were on duty guarding strategic sites in London and 600 augmented the defences of the Tyneside shipyards and munitions works.

[100][101] In November, the association was officially recognised as the administrative body of the VTC and formally subjected to conditions which prevented interference with recruitment into the regular army, barred volunteers from holding military rank or wearing uniforms other than an armband while on duty and denied any state funding.

Members provided their own arms, and amid concerns of competition with the established forces for the limited supply of rifles then available, the government prohibited volunteers from buying service weapons.

It was supported by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the Central Force First Army, who, in a letter to The Times, wrote of "the most valuable aid the VTC are giving me".

There was some doubt that the armband would be recognised as a uniform by the enemy, leaving members vulnerable to execution as francs-tireurs, and when it was suggested that the VTC might guard prisoners of war, it was pointed out that, technically, a volunteer could be hanged for murder if he shot an escapee.

[107] In January 1916, Field Marshal Sir John French, who until the previous month had been commander of the BEF on the Western Front, was appointed to the newly created position of Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces.

A report issued the same month concluded that a German invasion might involve a force of 160,000 men, though a more likely scenario would be a raid conducted by up to 20,000 troops on the east coast, north of the Wash.

The Central Force had by this time become little more than an administrative command through which territorial divisions passed on their way to being posted overseas, and in response to concerns that a coastal emphasis would degrade it further, French disbanded it.

It finally acceded on 29 February 1916, when it announced that the VTC would be properly constituted as a part-time military auxiliary which could be called upon under the provisions of the Volunteer Act of 1863 to help repel an invasion.

[122][e] The VF continued voluntarily to augment the RDC guarding vulnerable points, but were now also a military auxiliary, becoming a significant component in the mechanism by which French hoped both to defend the homeland and release as many men as possible for service in France.

[133] Based on its assessment and regarding the volunteers as inefficient, expensive and of no military value, the War Office recommended in September that the VF be reduced from its existing 312 battalions to 117 and the savings re-allocated to training the remainder to a better standard.

In December, the army was prioritised below the navy, the Royal Flying Corps, the shipbuilding, aircraft and tank manufacturing industries, and food and timber production for the allocation of personnel.

It relied on under-aged, largely untrained regular troops and low-category territorials, supported by part-time amateur auxiliaries recruited from tribunal men, the medically unfit and the over-aged.

The Director-General of the Territorial Force, Lord Scarbrough, claimed that they had "enabled the government to meet a critical situation", but the War Office regarded the volunteers' lacklustre response as proof of their long-held view that the organisation was militarily worthless.

[141] With the threat to the homeland now assessed at a raid of no more than 5,000 troops, the War Office produced plans in September for winding down the home defences to concentrate on training reinforcements for the field army.

The government invested in the volunteer movement less for its military potential and more as a political gesture, designed to appease, contain and direct the traditional Edwardian middle-class sense of patriotism and duty.